


to mend the severed dawn

by Shaedan



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 10:45:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12363996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shaedan/pseuds/Shaedan
Summary: There’s a life here, that she needs to take care of. A life. She wants to laugh. What’s a life? What’s one life, on the grand cosmic scale of things? A single one, a single one among millions, but that was too much. But it was enough, too, somehow, but not enough of either for it to tip the scales so there was a choice, a deal.Either things are, or they aren’t. The Raven Queen is cruel. She must be, if death is a matter of deals.or, vax is dead and no one is even remotely okay





	to mend the severed dawn

**Author's Note:**

> matthew mercer made me cry and owes me 3,000,000,000 dollars in emotional trauma expenses

You never really get used to it.

The dying.

You think you do, and then. Wham! Gut-punch, leaves you reeling, someone is _gone_ and you—

There’s this strange... guilt, to it. People die and you’re alive and it’s not right, somehow, like you should’ve come with them by some law of the universe that you’ve now broken. Survivor's guilt, it’s called. It’s so common it has a name, which should be comforting but somehow just isn’t.

Keyleth dashed her head on the rocks, dashed her whole body on the rocks, and sure, yeah, that was kinda traumatic, but she got better, and. And! Now she had died, like everybody else. She’d taken a trip to the void and then back again, just like the others; now everyone was the same. So. So.

So she had thought, a little morbidly, that at least the next time someone died, she wouldn’t have to feel guilty anymore. Y’know, ‘cause she’d done it too, now. A shared experience, rather than a ‘I lived but you didn’t and I kind of feel like that was my fault?’

Keyleth thinks that, and feels like doubling over in hysterics.

Because it didn’t change shit. It didn’t change _shit_ because Vax is dead, he’s _dead_ , and she feels like she’s going to drown in her own shame.

She broke the law. She’s going to cosmic jail, because she didn’t follow her friend to the grave, and it’s fucking ridiculous and she can’t stop crying.

“It’s the only jail you haven’t been to yet, might be an experience,” Scanlan suggests when she tells them about it as they drink, Vasselheim still smoking ruins around them because Vax hasn’t even been dead an hour, and she laughs and cries and can’t tell up from down anymore.

It’s like that. Nothing is right anymore. It’s like she fell asleep and when she woke up a century had passed and someone had moved everything just enough to the left that familiar things feel strange. Sleeping beauty, but there’s no prince. Nothing, except a broken world and her people to lead and a _life_ and she doesn’t want it, doesn’t want any of it.

A life. What’s that worth, really.

She says, “What’s anything worth,” and Percy says, “I don’t know.”

“Not this,” she says, “not this,” and she doesn’t know if she means herself or if she means Vax or Vecna or maybe even fucking Raishan, Thordak, _Brimscythe_ —

“It’s not right.”

“He made a deal.” Keyleth swallows. He did. He made a deal, and the Raven Queen followed it to the letter, but. But.

“He made a deal,” Percy agrees. “He shouldn’t have been able to.”

His eyes are dark, and bruised. Keyleth knows he doesn’t sleep well. Who fucking does.

“No one should be able to make deals about lives.”

\---

The issue with. The issue with.

The _issue_ with having a brother like a shadow, is that when he’s gone, you keep turning around and expecting him to be there.

The two hundredth and thirty-second time Vex turns and opens her mouth to talk to someone that isn’t there, _won’t_ be there, will _never_ be there ever again, she’s _alone_ , she throws what she’s holding at the wall and sinks down to her knees and _cries_.

She doesn’t know how to be lonely.

There was always someone there. Always. She’s never… She’s never been alone like this. She’s never been alone.

She thinks she should tell Syldor. But she doesn’t know what to say, and she can’t, anyway. She can’t.

“I saw mother,” she says. She’s been staring so long at her fingers gripping the handle of her tankard that everything else has faded to a soft grey static. “When he went, I saw. I saw mother.”

“I hope she gives him the scolding of his life,” someone mutters, mussed by alcohol and tiredness and sorrow. Vex doesn’t have the energy to hear who it is.

“I saw mother,” she repeats, and thinks that makes her feel better. It does. It has to.

Vex turns, and Vax isn’t there, and she cries. It’s like half of her has been sawed off, with a crude tool in a clumsy hand. She tries to walk, and stumbles. She tries to reach for something, and falls short. She tries to smile, but nobody makes her. There’s nothing to smile about.

She looks at herself in the mirror and touches her fingertips to her hair. It hasn’t been brushed in weeks, hasn’t been washed or taken care of at all.

“Vax would be angry with me,” she whispers, her hand falling to her cheek and mouth. “He’d tell me, your hair is a mess, stubby, and he’d sit me down and he’d—”

Her face scrunches up and that’s the last she sees before everything turns blurry and her head feels like it’s spinning.

She still hasn’t taken out the braids she had when they killed Vecna. She’s never going to. They’re going to stay there, forever, until Vax can redo them. He does them best, see. She never got the hang of braiding her own hair, she would just make a mess of it. She’ll wait until he comes back so he can do it, because then it’ll be done best and the lady of Whitestone can’t have anything but the best. It wouldn’t be proper.

Because he's coming back. He is, he can't—

He can't just leave her here.

Getting herself into the bath takes seven tries, with several false starts. Getting out is even harder; she sits there until the water is colder than she is, stealing her warmth and turning the tips of her fingers blue. Someone knocks on the door.

“My lady?”

“Coming,” she says.

There’s a life here, that she needs to take care of. A life. She wants to laugh. What’s a life? What’s _one life_ , on the grand cosmic scale of things? A single one, a single one among millions, but that was too much. But it was enough, too, somehow, but not enough of either for it to tip the scales so there was a choice, a deal.

Either things are, or they aren’t. The Raven Queen is cruel. She must be, if death is a matter of _deals_.

Vex’s eyes fill with tears, splitting the light into brilliant colours. She blinks, hard, and gives her tankard a straight right. It shatters against the wall.

The low conversation tapers off and everyone looks at her.

Her eyes brim with tears again; a thousand tiny crystals, left behind in her eyes. “She’s with him and he’s with her and I’m _alone_.”

\---

He casts wish the first thing he does in the morning every single day. He says, “I wish Vax was alive,” and he holds his breath and waits, and there’s nothing.

That’s the thing about having friends. You get attached.

Scanlan tries closing his eyes, tries singing it — one time, he arranges a complex pile of chairs and plays every single one of his instruments at the same time as he casts the spell, ‘cause maybe that’ll make it work. _Something_ has to make it work. Wish works, that’s why it’s there. You wish, and then what you wished comes true. That’s what it _does_.

It doesn’t.

He wishes something else, every once in awhile, just to make sure it still works. He throws a Scanlan II at some roadside robbers stupid enough to attack a gnome decked out in more magical items than they’ll ever see, he gives some kids in Whitestone permanent fire resistance for shits and giggles, he makes the garden outside their house the envy of the neighbourhood out of sheer boredom. Wish works, but it doesn’t _work_.

Then, one day, She’s there. Scanlan casts and opens his eyes, and She has come.

_You are tenacious, I will grant you that._

“Where is Vax,” Scanlan demands.

She says nothing. Scanlan thinks She seems to pity him.

“Wish _works_ ,” he tells her. “It _works_ , it’s what it does. Why doesn’t it?”

_Vax’ildan made a deal_.

“Why did you let him?”

The mask is as solemn and serene as ever, but Her silence is of surprise, not because She doesn’t want to answer.

“Why did you _let_ him?” Scanlan repeats, and he feels tears pressing on his eyes. “You let him come back, and then— and then you _took him away_. Do you realise how cruel that is?”

He swallows.

“Just so I’m clear on the rules, you know, just in case,” he says and aims for casual but misses by about an octave. “How does death work, exactly? Is it permanent or do we get to come back if you like us enough? Or is it if we make an appealing enough bargain? What do you want then, a show? Entertainment? I happen to be an expert.”

_You cannot cheat death_.

Scanlan says, “You did.”

\---

Back around that table in the shitty tavern, just an hour after Vax’s death, Keyleth laughs through her sore throat, through her thick tears. “People like us just aren’t meant to be happy,” she says and raises her tankard. “Cheers.”

People like them aren’t meant to be happy, and lives are things to be bartered for. Maybe that wasn’t the lesson they were meant to learn, but it’s the one they did. Sometimes people go and you never get them back.

“Cheers,” they all echo, and drink.

**Author's Note:**

> hi im dead inside
> 
> write BANANA if you liked it but don't know what to say. lets all support each other through this trying time.


End file.
